Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why Hardcover – September 20, 2016

Doyle is a clear-eyed critic with a gift for articulating unpleasant truths (backed up here by all the vaguely written negative reviews without "Verified Purchase" tags). The postscript alone (included in the paperback version), where she discusses our desire to punish women even at the expense of our own wellbeing, is worth the whole cost of the book. It's one of the best pieces I've read about feminism in the wake of the 2016 elections.

A brief synopsis: A deep dive into humanity’s constant need for a “Trainwreck” (a female celebrity gone off the rails in the worst ways). Why do we need trainwrecks? Who needs them most? What does it take to be a trainwreck? How long have trainwrecks existed? Why do women purchase degrading tabloids? This book discusses it all. It is the ugly truthReview: I want to start by making one thing clear: although I did not rate this five stars, I still think everyone should read it. But, I must be objective. I heard about this book via Crime Junkie’s Patreon feed. It was brought up because the podcast hosts’ were discussing the conservatorship looming over Britney Spears. I was super excited to read this because it has been quite a while since I’ve read a book that isn’t fiction. And I have a tendency to love opinion pieces. There were so many times in this book where my jaw was practically on the floor because of the amount of good points that were made. The author brings up all the issues of the 2000s (my childhood) and put them in ways that I had never even thought of. She speaks of “trainwrecks” from the 1800s-present day, and it’s sad that not much has changed in the way that women judge each other. As I said before, I think this book is for anyone and everyone. I rated it three stars because it rambled a little and I felt that it didn’t have to be as long as it was

Such an incredible, eye opening book. I am an advocate for women and children who have been abused, and this book had me looking at some of my own practices and the assumptions I have made about people. I've been working for years on trying to eradicate "crazy" out of my vocabulary, and this has been the most helpful book to remind me why I'm working on that.Definitely recommend for anyone interested in the well being of women in the world.

This book is very well written. It really helped me see feminism from another perspective, and how people will put women down in any way possible. It's important to be aware so that we know when it is happening and that women must fight back and stand up for each other.

You should never unquestionably receive narratives as given by media and online news. No story is created from a Platonic form. Every famous historical personage and celebrity's life story is conditioned by an historical arc competing interests. Sady Doyle's book traces several of these the create an overarching, meta-story of how popular culture chews up and spits out young women and has been doing so for a long, long time. A compelling read!

This book is not about feminism as much as it is about anti woman messages that we are constantly being bombarded with as a society. Doyle presents an eye opener making the reader stop and think.... hopefully, bringing about a positive pro woman change in every one of us.

Ok, so what. I have stong feminist views. Hold on now...it's not like that. Read it. It will make you go hmmmm. It's one of those books that make you consider a different point of view.

This was the best book I've read in years. So many great insights, packed into a compelling and easy to access narrative. Love this!

This book was delivered bright and early by Royal Mail, by 13:30 I'd read it cover to cover. There are times I'd laugh, times I'd want to cry and times I found myself nodding, I've seen friends trolled on twitter and shamed on tumblr and most of it is is from women/by women/to women. The book starts looking at the titular 'Trainwreck' it uses the 'celebrity' examples we are mainly familiar with ( as a Brit I admit only two of the contemporary examples were unfamiliar but it might just be that my media watching skills are sub-par ) and looks at what has happened to previous ladies who raised their voices. You may never have thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Bronte, Sylvia Plath, Billie Holiday and Britney Spears in the same sentence, let alone the same light before, having read this you may not think of them the same way again.I'm not going to to a 'good parts' review and I'm not going to spoil the book for you. It's well worth picking up, it is well worth reading, reflecting and then looking at your own thought processes and reactions.My first impression? Can we please give a copy of this to every girl/woman and get them to read it before they step forth onto social media.

Using the 'Trainwreck' archetype as vehicle, Doyle challenges our notion of what it looks like to fail and why. Why female emotions are seen as chaotic and something to be controlled and how women hold these trainwreck monsters as shadow and project onto them everything they repress about themselves. Doyle exemplifies a good understanding of history and used examples to back up her insights, for instance historical female writers and artists who were shamed into silence held the same constructed personal narrative as some of our modern day trainwrecks (Paris Hilton, Britney...). The nature of having a voice, being brave in a male world is scary and Doyle offers up the Trainwreck as inspiration to success rather than to silence us. Very good read. A honest writer with real passion for her subject.

An interesting, thought-provoking and at times unsettling examination of how society has responded to women, both in the past and in the current day, and which uses case studies of famous women from various time periods as illustrations.

Get ready for insanely long quotes and feminist inspirational talk because this book does it right and you feel hella empowered (and a little angry at the world) after reading it.This book manages to state pretty much everything that is wrong with our western society. Women are expected to not be human, we‘re expected to not exist unless in the context of men wanting us (meaning wanting to have sex with us, wanting to look at us, wanting us to react to them, wanting us to go away and disappear again). Men get to be everything human: They get to be wrong, they get to be bad, they get to be out of control, they get to be good and brave and intelligent and cruel and funny and women get to be: Nothing. We get to be an object men get to interact with. We get to be something for someone to take off a shelf and interact with and then put back when they‘re done.<i>„The good girl, the un-trainwreck, is feminine selflessness, taken to its most literal extreme; there is no self, no there, except as a reflection of some else‘s wishes. She never makes mistakes, and she never has regrets, because she never does anything unless she is asked to do it. She is so entirely cleansed of neediness, irrationality, and inner conflict, that the average woman cannot imitate her even in silence: Women who go silent about their needs, it turns out, still have needs. They‘re silent because they‘re repressing what they have to say. The ideal woman has a silence that arises from never wanting to speak about anything at all. And what living thing could be that passive, that quiet? Why is it, really, that we ficate on all of those Dead Blondes and Tragic Princesses? After looking at her long enough- the good woman, the ideal woman, the woman the trainwreck isn‘t- you get the disturbing impression that she‘s not a woman at all. She‘s a woman‘s corpse.“</i>Only, that‘s not how it works. Women are human, women are flawed, women will not be quiet and a toy anymore. And I‘m saying that at some point we were because we still sometimes are and have been. Women have been conditioned to be perfect or be hated for it. Which makes it pretty obvious why women (especially white women) are still sometimes the first ones to condemn other women. They get to say: „At least I‘m not that girl.“People have always used „othering“ as a way to make themselves look better or belonging to a certain group and then lifting that group above all else. So it makes sense that we still do that and it makes sense that women, once again especially white women who are already more privileged than women of color, try to use this „othering“ as a way to secure their own place.<i>„The Cult of True Womanhood was at its height in (Harriet) Jacobs‘s lifetime; the belief in the delicate, angelic, asexual nature of women, and of the sancticity of marriage, motherhood and domesticity, was so widespread that even deminists were using it to advocate their cause. And Jacobs had to say that it was a lie. That it was only tenable because millions of women- black women- were not allowed chastity, or delicacy, or protection. While white women‘s sexuality was being written out of existence, black women and girls were completely unprotected from sexual predation. The men preaching the sanctity of marriage and motherhood were building a business our of rape and the selling (of) their own children. What Harriet Jacobs had to say struck at the foundations of the deeply racist American partriarchy.“</i>Now, luckily, things are changing and have been for a while. The „Trainwreck“ is more common now than it ever was before, as Doyle argues, because we now have the internet and social media to stay in contact and bear witness to many more „trainwrecks“ happening to everyday people too. But the internet is also a great place to learn how human women are and how little difference there is between a „trainwreck“ and a regular person.I loved the way Doyle managed to bring into focus the way women have always been blamed not just for their own shortcomings, but for mens as well. We‘re especially seeing that nowadays with our talks about rapeculture. How somehow women (or in the case of rape culture all victims and survivors) are seen as being at fault. Men cannot be expected to control themselves because they‘ve been expected to do that. Men haven‘t been told „Don‘t look at her like that“, they‘ve been told „Look at her, she obviously wants you to wearing that!“. Women on the other hand have been told: „Don‘t take up so much space, don‘t scream, don‘t fight, don‘t dress like that, don‘t look like that, don‘t wear make-up, wear make-up you ugly bitch, don‘t show off your shoulders, your legs, wear a bigger shirt so no one can see that you have boobs, why do you always wear such oversized shirts you prude, why are you so thin, why are you so fat, why do you exist when I currently don‘t want you to exist?!“This is not supposed to excuse women who throw others under the bus just so they can scream: „I‘m not like them!“ because even if you‘re scared, that‘s not the way to go. But it does make it easier to understand why there are still people like that out there when it would be much more logical for women everywhere to go „No, stop, I don‘t believe that. I believe her and you need to listen.“<i>„Which is to say, Jacobs was able to get to the other side of silence by realizing exactly what makes is insupportable: If you don‘t tell people who you are and what you know, other people will be able to tell the world who you are for you. And, if it pleases them, they will be able to lie.Of course Jacobs also experienced silence‘s cruelest trick: Even if you do convince yourself to speak, someone else has to agree to listen to you. If they deny you, silence comes back. And it will swallow you whole.“</i>The thing is, everyone holds women to a higher standard than men. The thing is, women of color need to do immensly better than white women already have to, because the western world is still a racist place that likes to blame everyone else for their own shortcomings. But nowadays, women all over the world can not only talk to one another, they can talk to the world. They can't be silenced, no matter how hard men, and sadly other women, will try.<i>„She was scared, but she did it. That‘s all being strong is, apparently: being scared, or flawed, or weak, or capable (under the right circumstances) of astonishing acts of stupidity. And then going out and doing it all anyway. Trying, every morning, to be the woman you want to be, regardless of how often you manage to fall short of your own high expectations.“</i>The point is, as Doyle states, to not measure ourselves and others against the impossible high standards people like to impose on women. We don‘t need to be perfect. We don‘t even need to be better or good, we don't even need to be strong if strong means perfect, cold and basically dead. We just have to be strong enough to be who we are despite what western society is trying to tell us.There was also this great part about The Good Guy that I forgot to highlight and can't find anymore, but that was also on point. The Good Guy who's like "Not all men, I'm not like that" but knows someone who is and excuses a guy who's being accused and laughs about sexist jokes. Those Good Guys

For all people who were told to speak up if they want to be heard yet are shooshed when they say something uncomfortable. It is hard to find confidence in a world that subtly and openly tells you, you are not good enough or just plain wrong. Read, then go for it anyway! And when crushed: read again.